Auf Wiedersehen Konstanz - Hallo Europa!

My final look at Konstanz :'(

Well I'm finishing off my final post from Vienna and signing off this blog about my time in Konstanz. I really cannot believe how fast the time has flown. It was very heartbreaking leaving Konstanz, which really did become a second home to me. The day before my last a friend and I went to Zurich just for the day to explore it properly, but I wasn't even that impressed! (Mostly just astounded by the prices of everything). It is still a very beautiful city but after living in Konstanz it seems I've become a snob! It really is such a little paradise and it was with a heavy heart that I looked back at it for the last time on the ferry crossing the Bodensee on my way to Munich and eventually on to Vienna.

It was a great last few weeks just relaxing and doing whatever I felt like after the end of classes and exams. It was very sad times as well though saying goodbye to all my new friends who left one by one. But there were many many celebratory as well as goodbye parties so it was a lot of fun. I ticked through all the last minute things I wanted to do in Konstanz before I left- such as going to Mainau Island, checking out the fabulous archaeological museums, going to the top of the Münster etc. Not to mention getting my fill of Weiss bier and Wurst before I left Germany (happy to say I achieved all of those things).

A week before I left I sent home a huge box that was 18 kg- what a load off! It had heaps of clothes, books, shoes etc that I don't need, plus I want to travel through Europe as light as possible- especially since it will already be a pain to lug around a suitcase.

Giant flower ducks!

So a few highlights, one beautiful sunny day my friend and I went to Insel Mainiau, an island in Konstanz owned by the King of Sweden. It's famous for it's stunning flowers, gardens and natural beauty. We got in for free being students (yay) and it was such an enjoyable day, although blimey it was hot. It had enormously cool sculptures made out of hedges and flowers, a huge Schmetterlingshaus (new favourite word! -butterfly house), farm animals, a palace, the best playground I've ever seen in my life and of course many biergartens. I was well impressed.

Currywurst <3

One of the days an open air cinema started for a couple of weeks and guess what movie they were opening with- What We Do In The Shadows! How random that they are playing a New Zealand movie here! Of course my Kiwi friend and I went and dragged two others with us. The tickets sold out really fast so luckily we got there early. I had brought with me to Germany our famous Kiwi onion dip and I've been waiting for a special occasion to bust it out so I'm glad I waited- this was the perfect night for it! So we had chips and dip and I also kindly shared my last packet of Tim Tams and it was so enjoyable watching the movie and hearing Kiwi accents again. The film was SO well received! Everyone laughed just as much as we did and it was such a great feeling. I was a proud Kiwi. It did however go very silent when the 'Nazi-Vampire' scene came up... haha, awkward. But apart from that... Everyone even clapped at the end when the credits came up!

Konstanzer Weinfest

The final week had plenty of goodbyes with drinks by the river, in the forest biergarten again and I even went to Berrys twice (nightclub), which I hadn't been to since March. And on my final days a huge wine festival started in Konstanz- brilliant timing! So I spent my last 2 nights there with friends drinking delicious wine and eating my last batch of currywurst.

I spent my final day furiously packing and cleaning my apartment (as I had spent the day before in Switzerland, and then at the Weinfest haha), so that was a massive mission to be out by 3 pm with everything perfect! Made it in a nick of time though and I dropped my suitcase at a neighbour's and went to town for the last time. I climbed the Münster for a great view of the city, and had a gelato on the lake front. I then went back and had a last beer with a friend and then caught the bus that evening (which I only just made by a minute as I got the time wrong...) for an overnight trip to Austria.

Well I'm on the most exciting part of my adventure now! A brief overview: I'm currently in Vienna for 4 nights and I have a little apartment to myself. Next up is Budapest for 2 nights, then Krakow for 4 nights where I am also going to Auschwitz for the day. Then I'm off to Prague for 3 nights, and that's the first leg of my trip (that I'm doing all by myself... eep). But after that I fly to Dublin where I'm meeting up with my lovely Kiwi friends currently living in London, for an awesome 3 day girls weekend. Then I have another 4 nights in London before embarking on my first Contiki Trip 'Western Quest.'

All the places I'm going to!

It goes from London down France to Paris and Bordeaux then to San Sebastian and Barcelona in Spain. It's an 8 day trip and I stay on in Barcelona an extra 2 nights after that ends. Then I fly to Athens! From there is Contiki trip number 2- which is a Greek and Turkish Island cruise! I'm looking forward to it so much. We visit loads of fabulous island such as Santorini, Mykonos, Crete, Rhodes etc, that's a 6 day trip.

I then have a whole week in Athens and there I'll be reunited with my other great friends coming from New Zealand! From there we fly to Rome for 4 nights, then Venice for 3 nights and finally finishing up in Munich for Oktoberfest for 3 nights! I like than I'm finishing back in Germany (with a bang!).

I fly out on the 21st of September. It's a massive trip so I'm sure I'll be a total travel pro by the end- I feel like a complete deer in headlights at the moment! So I have a lot to look forward to, it doesn't even seem like real life. But I really can't wait to get home as well to my wonderful fiance because 6 whole months apart is TOO long! Such a testament to us though as we are still as strong as ever. Also cant wait to see my stinky cat, eat a pie and have proper sushi!

Und das ist alles! Thank you for reading and following me on my journey, especially if you've been reading from the start! Funnily enough though I'm not done- I'm doing another blog about my Euro-Trip haha. But it will mostly be a very brief overview with just a few pics etc for family and friends that keep asking what I'm up to, so I can just send them straight to my blog! I haven't started it just yet though, I wanted to finish this Konstanz one off first. So I will link it below sometime in the next couple of days. Last lot of pics below. Over and out! Auf Wiedersehen!

Here it is now: http://kiwineurope.blogspot.com

Bodensee

Insel Mainau adventures

Turtles!

Goodbye uni, you crazy unique place you

Zurich for the day!

<3 Konstanz   (Not my pic)

Goodbye :'(    (also not my pic)

Two weeks left :'(

Oh dear well I have another whole month to catch up on! It's been a crazy final month, being the end of the semester now and filled with study, papers, presentations and exams. But it's pretty much all over now thank god! I have just a few more papers to write and that's it. My presentations and exam went pretty well I think. Well I'm pretty sure I passed everything so I'm happy about that! And I know I have at least one A as a final grade...

Fairy-tale Castle

So nearly 4 weeks ago I went to visit the fabulous Neuschwanstein castle which has always been a dream of mine! (The castle Walt Disney based his castles off). It was so amazing in real life! We also visited Hohenschwangau castle as they were right next to each other. The King of Bavaria had it pretty sweet!

Strasbourg!

The week after that I went on an excursion to Strasbourg in France for the day (it's only 2 hours drive away- I love Europe). We visited the Council of Europe and got to sit it on a live debate of the United Nations. Then we had a historical tour of the city and visited the Notre Dam cathedral (I didn't know there was more than one either) and then we had free time to explore the city. Lunch of course consisted of croissants, macaroons and all the french goodies we could get our hands on.

Besides that I've spent a lot of time in the lake as the European heatwave that came through sent the temperatures soaring to 40 degrees here. It broke Germany's highest record! It was pretty unbearable in my room especially as there's no air conditioning and the window I have only opens a crack! That made studying very difficult. So I've been keeping cool by eating loads of gelato and spending most of my time in the water- it's soooo nice- 25 degrees!

Two weekends ago we had a cool end of semester international student activity. We got an afternoon ride on a big cruise boat on lake Constance and it went for three hours right down the Rhein to Switzerland. It was so nice, the scenery was astounding! And it was cool hanging out with the big group again and having a few beers. After that my friend who me and Terese stayed with in Berlin was visiting for the weekend so we met up and went to the river for an evening swim and hung out. Then we spent the night at the lake side biergarten eating schnitzel, drinking cocktails and listening to live music. The next day was the 4th of July so the Americans put on a big BBQ by the river. That was a fun afternoon spent swimming, eating and drinking and then later we went back to party at their flat playing beer pong before heading out to town afterwards.

Evening swims >

After that weekend I really knuckled down with my studying and worked so hard which I'm glad payed off in the end. It's such a good feeling to have that all done but I'm really sad to be leaving soon in only 2 weeks! I've really made myself at home here. I'm super excited of course to go travelling, but my travel partner for the first part recently had to back out for family reasons so now I'm doing the first part by myself- for 2 weeks! And I'm going to Eastern Europe and I've never really done this kind of thing before, staying in AirB&Bs and I'll be navigating without internet (will only work on free wifi) so I'm a bit nervous... I'm sure it will be very character building! In the next post, my last one here I'll go into details about where I'm going.

Oh yeah I also went out one night last week with my Swede and American friends- we went to a hidden biergarten in the middle of the forest! It was a half hour walk away but it was so cool! It had such a wicked atmosphere- big picinc tables and fairy lights outside with massive fire pits to grill. It was a really great night. There was a random giant table and chair which I of course made everyone climb on for a pic because it made us look like hobbits!

So yeah that's all for now. I'm starting to pack up my room so catch ya next time.

 ~Have a whole month's worth of pictures! :

Bavaria

Council of Europe

(Random Nationality party- they only had an Australian friend so my fellow Kiwi and I
tried to turn it into a NZ one by covering the extra stars with stickers that we coloured blue.
Didn't quite work...)

Medieval horsing around

Reeeeally random (and disturbing) fountain in Konstanz!

Pork knuckle dates >

Gonna miss my crazy univeristy!

Sommer ist hier!

Olympiapark

Hello! I'm getting pretty busy with uni work so this will just be a brief look at what I've been up to for the last 3 weeks. The biggest thing was going to Munich's ROCKAVARIA to see Metallica and Faith No More! Seeing Metallica was definitely a dream come true and they were so amazing live, it couldn't have been better! They played all the best songs for nearly 2 hours so it was such a great show. I went by myself as nobody else I know here is a rock fan. But whatever, I've been to many concerts by myself, so that doesn't bother me.
I made some friends anyway! At first a group of cool Germans adopted me just before Faith No More started playing and we hung out and had drinks together. We all went crazy during Metallica rocking out so it was nice to be with people doing that and not just be a crazy person doing that by myself! Towards the end of Metallica our group merged with another group that came from the UK and I made friends with one Scottish girl in particular and she happened to be staying in a hostel right next door to mine- so I made sure we stuck together the rest of the night so we could get safely back home eventually.
The concert was at the massive Olympiapark stadium and there were so many people, so I was quite grateful to have found someone and we helped each other navigate back to the city centre after the show. From there us and two other guys from England she was with got a typical 1 am kebab and then powered on for more drinks around Munich central. We all got along so well and were having such a good time that I accidentally stayed out until 5 am. And it wasn't until the bars then closed and we were walking home that I realised how late it was because the sky started getting lighter!

Crowd shot! (Not my pic)

By the time I got in bed and to sleep it was nearly 6 and I had to wake up less than 3 hours later as the check out time was at 10 am. So I woke up still intoxicated... let's just say that next day was not a fun one at all! (I got back home in one piece though so all was fine- a big mac meal sorted me out).

Apart from that random fun night in Munich, I've been super busy with uni work. One project in particular was something I have never worked so hard on anything before. It was a presentation for a psych masters seminar I'm taking and the standard here is so high. I was so nervous about presenting (45 min minimum) to a class full of people on a topic that I could hardly wrap my head around. And the previous presentations from class mates had been really good (I thought) yet the teacher had been very critical so my partner and I were quite afraid... I'm so grateful for my partner I was with though, she is one of the loveliest girls I have ever met and fortunately she understood the studies and took over that part of the presentation, and with my- I wouldn't say skills, but I'm a confident speaker, so together with me presenting the information and her taking over the explanations- we were a pretty strong team. We worked so hard and stayed up past midnight most nights working on it for over 2 weeks.
The results were very worth all the effort thank goodness! The feedback from the class and also the teacher was very positive and we got full marks so that's my second A+! So that was such a great feeling of achievement.

Gorgeous Rhein meeting the lake Bodensee 

That was only my first presentation out of 4 though so there is a lot more work to be done. I also have another 4 written assignments and one big exam- and there's only 6 weeks left of the semester! The time is going crazy fast. Summer is definitely upon us. It's getting up to 33 degrees so far and it's still so warm at night, it feels like I'm on a tropical island! Its not getting dark until after 10pm. I've managed to get to the lake once for a swim and lying in the sun with friends, and I also went for a nice walk in the sunshine last week and captured a few photos around town now that its summer. I'm really obsessed with the buildings here- everywhere you look is so unique and captivating.

Sunset over the Flohmarkt

This weekend just gone was a big event in Konstanz and Kreuzlingen where a giant 24 hour flea market took over the streets for several kms from one side of town to the other (in Switzerland). It was so enormous- there were such amazing stalls filled with antiques, collectibles and so many random things. I went with some friends and we enjoyed the street food and beer stalls that were every few hundred metres. I am now the proud new owner of a dirndl! So now I am all ready for Oktoberfest. =D

I've recently decided that since I don't have exams in August as I initially was told, I will now leave here at the end of July and embark on an epic 2 month travel trip before heading home. It's a lot of fun planning (and great for procrastinating), and once everything is confirmed and booked I'll be more specific in the next post. So that's exciting but there's still so much work to be done before that! Despite the work load I do have 3 day trips coming up this second half of June to look forward to. This Friday I'm going to the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria (which Walt Disney based his castles off) and then next week I'm going to Strasbourg in France, and also a trip to Reutlingen in Germany.
So that's about all for now! Bis Bald.

Mein ticket

 



Metallica!!

 

Fav lunch

Nice day for a walk :)

 

 



Typical night out in Germany... a Chilean, Norwegian,
American, a Kiwi and 2 Swedes in onesies...

I don't know- this coke can made me lol

Building porn

Skype date with my main gal